Refresh your PC Fixes software problems by reinstalling the OS while preserving the user data, user accounts, and important settings. All other preinstalled customizations are restored to their factory state. In Windows 10, this feature no longer preserves user-acquired Windows apps.

Reset your PC prepares the PC for recycling or for transfer of ownership by reinstalling the OS, removing all user accounts and contents (e.g. data, Classic Windows applications, and Universal Windows apps), and restoring preinstalled customizations to their factory state.

The options above are great for what they are intended for, but you could also do a repair install of Windows 10 by performing an in-place upgrade without losing anything other than all installed Windows Updates.

You will only be able to do a repair install of Windows 10 from within Windows 10. You will not be able to do a repair install at boot or in Safe Mode.

You will need at least around 8.87 GB + what Windows is currently using of free space available on the Windows drive.

The installation media (ex: ISO or USB) must be the same editionand same or newer build as your currently installed Windows 10. If it's not, then the repair install will fail.

The installation media (ex: ISO or USB) must be the same language as your currently installed Windows 10. If it's not, then you will not keep anything.

If you have a 32-bit Windows 10, then you must use a 32-bit ISO or USB.

If you have a 64-bit Windows 10, then you must use a 64-bit ISO or USB.

If Windows is encrypted by BitLocker, then you will need to either suspend or turn off BitLocker for the Windows drive before doing a repair install. Once installation has finished, you can resume or turn on BitLocker again.

Before you get started doing a repair install of Windows 10, be sure that you also temporarily disable Secure Boot in your UEFI firmware settings. Once installation has finished, you can enable Secure Boot again if you like.

System Protection will be reset to the default of being turned off. It is recommended to turn on system protection after the repair install has finished to have restore points.

You will lose any custom fonts.

You will lose any customized system icons.

You may need to re-establish your Wi-Fi connection.

You will need to redo Windows updates subsequent to the build you have used for the repair install.

Windows.old will be created.

You will need to redo any language downloads including the display language if you changed that.

This tutorial will show you how to do a repair install of Windows 10 by performing an in-place upgrade without losing anything.

You must be signed in as an administrator to be able to do a repair install of Windows 10.

2. If you have not already, you will need to disable or uninstall any 3rd party AV or security program you have installed first to prevent it from interfering with the upgrade to Windows 10. You can reinstall it after Windows 10 has finished installing.

3. Do the step below depending on what you are using to do a repair install of Windows 10 with.

Do not use the Media Creation Tool to do a repair install with if you have an older build of Windows 10 installed and wish to retain it since the Media Creation Tool will not include support for older builds. You will be upgraded to the latest build provided by the Media Creation Tool.

A) Click/tap on the Download button below to go to Microsoft, and click/tap on the bottom Download tool now button at Microsoft's site.

17. If you like, you could use Disk Cleanup to delete the Windows upgrade log files, Previous Windows installation(s), and Temporary Windows installation files items to free up the large amount of space that they take on your hard drive. (see screenshots below)

Glad to see you got to this one! Shawn I think a large number of people are going to need to take this step which will save a great deal of time trying to debug an initial upgrade install found "buggy"! I had to go this route when 10 was first on and found to be just that needing a big repair. This is mainly due to the upgrade installer not fully seeing everything go on as it should.

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I know that one quite well here for sure! When finally getting that first upgrade on many things didn't seem to go well like getting the antivirus software on even the 2016 beta version which would have automatically included 10 support refused and crash landed. I said to myself well got to think back about how we used to fix the previous versions and Upgrade to Repair I went and that ran well until finally it came time to go for broke with the fresh full clean install that was going to come anyways!

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I was having a problem with installing Visual Studio 2015 with registry entires with no permissions! I had to manually fix each entry until the setup finally installed. Now I having a similar problem with Visual Studio 2008.

Will this fix registry entries with no permissions?

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